Media properties selection method and system based on expected profit from profile-based ad delivery

What is this patent about?

’139 is related to the field of behavioral targeting and electronic advertisement placement. In the digital advertising ecosystem, behavioral targeting (BT) companies track user actions across various websites to build profiles that allow for more relevant ad delivery. A significant technical challenge in this field is the efficient identification of a specific user across different domains and media properties, especially when the entity that collected the user's profile does not own the ad space where the user is subsequently found.

The underlying idea behind ’139 is the use of a profit-based filter to decide which third-party media properties should be authorized to recognize and serve ads to a specific profiled visitor. Instead of indiscriminately tagging users for all possible ad networks, the system calculates the expected revenue from a user's specific profile attributes—such as search keywords or content history—and compares it against the cost of buying ad space on secondary properties. By only arranging for a cross-domain tag when a positive profit margin is anticipated, the system optimizes the computational and financial overhead of behavioral retargeting.

The claims of ’139 focus on a method and system for directing electronic advertisements by communicating specific conditions to a third-party server that controls ad space on a second media property. The system receives profile attributes from a visitor’s interaction with a first media property and uses this data to authorize the third-party server to display a correlated advertisement during a subsequent visit. This authorization is contingent upon the system determining that a specific condition—derived from the visitor's profile—has been met, effectively bridging the gap between the profile collector and the ad space controller.

In practice, the invention works by performing a cookie matching or tagging operation only after a financial feasibility check. When a visitor performs a high-value action, such as searching for a mortgage, the BT company identifies media properties where the cost of an ad impression is lower than the projected value of that mortgage lead. The system then redirects the visitor to those specific properties to drop a readable tag or cookie. This ensures that when the user later visits a site like a weather portal, that portal’s ad server already possesses the necessary indicia to recognize the user and request a targeted ad from the BT company.

This approach differs from prior solutions like DoubleClick’s Boomerang by introducing a dynamic, margin-aware selection mechanism for media properties. Traditional methods often focused on the technical ability to find a user elsewhere without considering the economic variance of different ad spaces or the diminishing value of specific behavioral profiles over time. By integrating a price cap logic into the tagging workflow, the invention ensures that the infrastructure for tracking and re-identifying users is only deployed for transactions that are mathematically likely to result in a profit for the targeting entity.